February 21, 2009 - According to the World Health Organization (WHO), which is the UN’s authority for health issues, Russia ranks fourth according to the number of smokers per capita. The WHO report reveals that two-third of the world’s smokers live in just ten countries – China, India, Indonesia, Russia, US, Japan, Brazil, Bangladesh, Germany and Turkey.Russia leads the US and Brazil in the total number of smokers, although it has a much smaller population. Moreover, first-ranked China, followed by second- and third-place India and Indonesia respectively have much larger populations than Russia, yet the latter finds itself in the same smoky neighborhood.

Despite the growing awareness in Russia that smoking is a leading factor in death and disease, smoking continues to kill millions of Russians deaths every year, thus making the smoking problem more acute than that of TB, AIDS and malaria taken together.